Lamentations 3:24–25
Most of us know the strange quiet of a waiting room. The muffled television, the magazines nobody reads, the clock that seems to move slower than it should. Somebody else has the news. All we can do is sit there and wait for it.
Continue reading “The Only Portion That Lasts”
Lamentations 2:14
Most of us know the difference between a friend who tells us what we want to hear and one who tells us the truth. One feels better in the moment. The other may hurt, but it’s the friend we need most.
Continue reading “What They Wanted to Hear”
Jeremiah 51:20-23
Most of us have been handed a job we didn’t feel ready for. Not enough training. Not enough confidence. Not enough of whatever the moment seemed to require. We look at what needs doing and wonder why anyone thought we were the right person for the job.
Continue reading “The Hammer God Chose”
Matthew 10:32–33
Drive through any neighborhood in July and you’ll see them. Flags on porches, flags on trucks, flags snapping off the back of golf carts. A flag isn’t a quiet thing. It’s not tucked in a drawer or folded in a closet somewhere, waiting to be discovered. A flag exists to be seen. That’s the whole point of it.
Continue reading “The Flag You’re Afraid to Fly”
Jeremiah 42:5–6 (ESV)
It’s easy to make a promise in the moment. Someone asks for our word, and we give it freely, without counting the cost. We tell a friend we’ll be there. We tell our kids we’ll change. We tell God, in a hard season, that if He’ll just get us through this, we’ll do whatever He says. The promise costs nothing to speak. It’s the keeping that gets expensive.
Continue reading “We’ll Do Whatever You Say”
Jeremiah 37:17
Most of us know what it is to want a word from God. Not a sign in the sky, just some quiet sense that He sees what we are facing and has something to say about it. The trouble is, that hunger usually shows up after we have spent a long time keeping His voice at arm’s length. That was Zedekiah’s problem, and he is about the last man we would expect to come looking.
Continue reading “Is There Any Word from the Lord?”
Jeremiah 35:5-6
Most of us know what it feels like to be the only person in the room saying no. Everyone else seems comfortable with the choice. Going along would be easier, and we can usually find a good reason to do it. That is when a conviction stops being an idea and becomes a decision.
Continue reading “When Convictions Are Tested”
Jeremiah 32:27
The city was surrounded. Babylon’s army had been camped outside Jerusalem’s walls for months, and everyone inside knew it was only a matter of time. That’s when God told Jeremiah to do something that must have seemed completely insane: buy a piece of land.
Not just any land. Land in the path of the very army closing in. Jeremiah paid good money for a field in Benjamin, signed the deed, sealed it in a clay jar, and handed it over. His reason was simple. God said that one day, people would buy and sell land in Israel again. Life would return. Restoration was coming. The purchase was a sign of faith in a future only God could see.
Continue reading “What a Good Father Does”
Jeremiah 31:3
There is a thought that creeps in on most of us at some point, usually late at night or in the quiet after a hard week. The thought that maybe we have gone too far this time. That we have wandered too long, or failed too often, and that somewhere along the way, God quietly stopped looking for us.
Continue reading “A Love That Never Lets Go”